Ye Mantram Vesave - Movie Review

'Ye Mantram Vesave', starring Vijay Devarakonda and Shivani Singh in the lead, hit the screens this Friday.  Let's find out what works and what doesn't.

Story:

Nikky (Vijay Devarakonda) is as immersed in video games as Arjun Reddy was in his Baby's love.  He is a passionate gamer who bets big time.  He flirts with a countless number of girls, who easily fall for his dashing charms.  Girls are toys for him! (Note: Since he doesn't like to step out of his living room, he is not a philanderer).

Enter Rags (Shivani Singh), a lover of the real world and an arch rival of violent video games.  Nikky meets her online and takes it as a challenge to impress her.

When Rags asks him to find out her address by pursuing a series of clues, Nikky plays ball.  He traces her after a lengthy 25-minute episode, only to find her in a heavily injured state.  A sex trafficker is out to get her.  The rest of the story is about how Nikky saves Rags from the evil clutches of a cruel gang.

What works?

Vijay Devarakonda.

What doesn't work:

We mean, almost everything.

There is no consistency in the behaviour of the heroine's character.  She is shown to be a creative, high-thinking person in the initial scenes. But suddenly, she starts behaving as if she is smitten by Nikky, someone she thinks is a useless jerk.  Before you know, she even starts video-chatting with him on a night and engages in a semi-romantic conversation.In one scene, she is shown to be hyper-sensitive to bloody video games.  In the next scene, she plays a bloody prank on her friends.

The heroine's friends are shown to be debauched and the hero's friends are perennial jokers/losers.

The girl's friends visit her home and decide to make an impromptu video song.  Sixty seconds later, we resign to the fate of watching a mediocre, full-fledged, song just because the girls want to upload their video onto the Internet. The hero's parents behave like outdated characters in a B-grade TV soap. The dad actually tells his wife that one can stay connected via a data card.  Huge thanks for the info. Every damn girl in the movie does video calls with complete strangers at the drop of a hat.  One of them, in fact, decides to meet the stranger who recently sent her friend a Facebook friend request.

Dozens of young girls have gone missing in the city and the first person to spot a scandal in this is only our hero. What about cops?  Well, there is only one cop and he is shown lazing around in the police station and that's all.

We wanted to permanently give up on the film after witnessing how the hero cracks the address of the villain's factory.  And we did just that. Before this atrocious episode, an atrocious photoshoot song shot on the heroine arrives for the sake of those male audiences who love sexy legs.

When the villain forces her, the heroine actually pulls of a mock-scream as if the hero wants to forcibly kiss her for fun. Enough said.

Performance score:

Vijay Devarakonda, Vijay Devarakonda, Vijay Devarakonda.  And even he works only minimally.  For all the credit of being the film's only bright spot, the level of intensity he shows even in the most serious scenes pales in comparison with what we saw of him in Arjun Reddy's least serious scenes. This was his early film but got released four years later.

Shivani Singh is a Katrina Kaif dupe and that's all. The other ones, especially the villains, don't even make any efforts.  

Bottom-line:

Director-producer Shridhar Marri's 'Ye Mantram Vesave' was filmed in 2014 when Vijay Devarakonda was making baby steps in movie industry. The director's incapability and amateurish handling of this story makes it a boring watch.